With the development of broadband wireless access technology, end users may access a heterogeneous network by different access technologies to meet the requirements of different applications. A heterogeneous network may include a mix of high performance capabilities of large-scale base stations (e.g., macro base stations) with lowpowered base stations (e.g., micro base stations, pico base stations, femto base stations and relay base stations) that work to complement the performance of the large-scale base stations. The base stations may be categorized based on transmission powers, access characteristics or the like. For example, a macro base station may provide good coverage with higher transmit power, while a relay base station may allow for higher data rates with lower transmit power.
Performance of applications may be determined by a number of factors, such as bandwidth, latency, throughput, reliability, robustness or the like. For example, multimedia applications such as voice over IP (VoIP) and online games may require a sustained bandwidth with minimum latency. Data applications, on the other hand, may require high total throughput but are latency tolerant. In this regard, it is desirable to improve data transmissions based on the requirements of applications, thereby significantly increasing the capacity of wireless networks and facilitate better quality of service for end users.